Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/260

248 the roof of the vault is only fifty feet high, and contains both bats' and swifts' nests. The bats' nests are similar in form to the swifts', but are made of moss only, which these mammalia pick off the limestone bowlders outside.

At one stretch of the lower Kinabatangare several villages had been abandoned some years previously on account of the ravages of small-pox. When asked their age, many natives would answer that they were so many years old at the time of the last epidemic of this disease. The usual interval between the visitations was eighteen or twenty years; and the old men would sometimes acknowledge to having seen the ravages of three or four epidemics. Another settlement had been abandoned on account of the voracity of the crocodiles, which had mastered the art of overturning boats and devouring their occupants. The crocodiles are very numerous in these fresh-water rivers, and many natives are taken by them every year. At a place further up the river, a large one, fourteen feet long, was towed to the bank close to the house where the author was staying. "There was much joy manifested by the Muruts at its capture, as it had eaten a brother-in-law of the chief. Pieces of the bones and skull were found inside, and brought to the house with a good deal of merriment. A chief who has many wives has usually many brothers-in-law, and he is obliged, in a measure, to assist or support the latter. The loss, therefore, of a brother-in-law more or less is not only immaterial, but rather a merciful dispensation; and so there was as much joy, feasting, and congratulation as if Maharajah Oban had been presented by one of his wives with a new baby."

"The Murut," we are informed, "does not wear any clothes, but sports a bit of bark in front; some strings of colored beads encircle his head, a few charms hang around his neck; he carries a spear as though he feared no man, and annexes a new wife when he is 'off with the old love.' The women and children are much neglected,"

Where the river passed through a large uninhabited jungle-forest, "in both banks were compressed heaps of leaves and wooden debris from four to ten feet thick, that had been washed down by floods. Where the river-water had washed part of the layers away, the section of the bank presented the appearance of a cutting in a hay-stack. These large deposits, if undisturbed, may, after many centuries of compression, form into coal. At a station near the Batu Timbang caves, where the traveler negotiated with the rajah proprietor concerning the proceeds of the bird's-nests, a dance was given in his honor. In the favorite figures the women, holding each other's hands, moved in one circle, while the men, also holding hands, moved in an outside circle, but in the opposite direction—to the sound of music composed of